Patraw hearing details sexual harassment charges, termination
Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2008 @ 4:04 pm
Seven witnesses testified Tuesday in the whistle blower hearing detailing the termination of former Nevada soccer coach Terri Patraw.
Patraw is suing the University of Nevada, Reno for her job back saying she was fired Aug. 28 for reporting NCAA violations for other Nevada athletic programs.
Witnesses testified about sexual harassment claims, details in her termination and NCAA violations. The two-day hearing will conclude Wednesday.
UNR lawyer Charles Hilsabeck started off the agenda asking for the sexual harassment charge to be dropped. It wasn’t.
Patraw’s lawyer Jeffrey Dickerson said that Nevada men’s basketball coach Mark Fox referred to Patraw as a lesbian and talked to other male employees about who Patraw was having sex with.
Sexual harassment questions were asked to most witnesses, but questions about her termination and NCAA violations took up the most time.
Assistant Vice President of Human Resources Gina Jones, who had meetings with Director of Athletics Cary Groth about Patraw, said she couldn’t recall why Patraw was fired because it happened so long ago, about six months.
Campus provost Janet Vreeland said she believed Patraw was fired because of a lack of trust after as many as 10 resignations.
Patraw says that the basis of her termination is because of reported violations.
Jean Perry, who’s the assistant to the president for athletics, academics and NCAA compliance, said that Nevada has had 19 alleged NCAA violations reported in the 2006-07 academic year.
Officials reported 13 violations this year, which included Patraw’s reports, Perry said.
She also said Nevada men’s golf coach Rich Merritt was suspended for providing an airline ticket to a player.
Merritt, who was interim women’s golf coach while coach Jody Dansie was on maternity leave, dared players to do tasks for money, like “huck a loogie” and eat a piece of spit-out food, documents said.
Perry confirmed the money given to the players for the dares and the airline ticket was given to a charity of the their choice.
Perry said Merritt was cleared of a gambling charge. Patraw reported all alleged violations.
Director of Compliance Sandie Niedergall said that there was no significance to the athletics department or the university for the NCAA violations committed by Merritt.
Assistant soccer coach Graeme Abel said Patraw mentioned the alleged violations about Merritt. Patraw told Abel she was “untouchable” and had dirt on the entire department, Abel said.
Groth, her associate athletic director Cindy Fox and Patraw are set to testify Wednesday.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 4:04 pm and is filed under Soccer, Sports.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Print this post
Email this post
© 2008 The Nevada Sagebrush
